Problem with permission on high sierra

Wow. I'm hoping that, Barney, you somehow aren't right about this—but it seems likely that you are. When I went into Terminal and couldn't chmod the volume's perms, I thought I was hacked or needed to reinstall or who-knows-what. I still can't quite believe it, but guess I must. This problem didn't exist on any Mac OS pre-High_Sierra, AFAIK. I actually found myself thinking that I ought to consider...you know, that other platform. ;-) Anyway, muchas gracias, amigo! FWIW, my relatively painful workaround was to open up Shared HD > User and copy (as copying via n/w was the issue) that way. SMH.

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
• Loads only required kernel extensions
• Prevents startup items and login items from opening automatically
• Disables user-installed fonts
• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

This is the problem I am having too.

When I network my two laptops any external drives attached to them appear on the linked computer. But in neither direction can I get the boot drive (or any area of that drive like my documents for instance) to appear on the other machine. So, since the installation of High Sierra 10.13.3 I cannot synchronise my computers. I had thought setting permissions for the boot drive to include me by user name (rather than the generic 'admin') might help. But apparently that's impossible because it's a very bad idea.

I can, however, easily link with my wife's computer (as a registered user) that's still running 10.12.6. The update to Sierra hasn't affected that network connection. It's just between my own two machines.

I know the high tech numpties would prefer I rent space in the cloud and synchronise my computers that way. But they are clearly never out of range of high speed wifi. Some of us spend time in less populated areas with a 1 meg internet connection. SO I would really appreciate it if someone can tell me how to retrieve the functionality I had.

If you click on finder > Go > Macintosh HD > click on get info why are you trying to change the read and write permissions and interfering the settings .

The Mac user should not touch these settings , it could lead to system corruption and might have to install the operating system from the beginning .

Disable SIP, then change the permissions, then reenable SIP. Quick google search for that will turn up plenty of sites but basically you boot into recovery mode, go to terminal

csrutil disable

Then boot back up normally, change your permissions. Then back to recovery mode and

csrutil enable

Boot back into normal mode and that is it.

From Terminal, when you enter this string, do you actually see a root ?

dscl . list /Users | grep -v "_\|nobody\|daemon"

So you're saying ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT ROOT level you can not change anything ?

as in you can navigate here Nor Able to change things? - Are you changing System files ?

Have you tried to create another account and give it admin privileges ?

You could probably also escalate the authority of the 'root' account to what it should be if it's not set low enough - it should be set to ZERO (0), is it in-fact that when you run from terminal:

dscl . list /Users UniqueID

Thank you, didn't know that, you have saved me a lot of wasted time.

SDG

Looks good. I may give that a try. Tell you what, though...as having done fair amount of *nix admin-type stuff, I find this totally odious on Apple's part.

In High Sierra, you cannot change the permissions on the root level of the hard drive.

If it is an external drive, you can set it to "Ignore ownership" in Get Info.

Or, you can just create folders at the root level to use instead. Once created, you can modify the contents without authenticating.

Ppaatt wrote:

The solutions here aren't working. I'd like to see Apple fix this terrible High Sierra.

They aren't "solutions." They are the way things are.

The root of hard drive is protected from tampering.

Apple may decide it doesn't require that much security, but until they you should find a suitable workaround.

A couple hours with Apple support people and a reinstall of High Sierra didn't fix a thing. I appreciate the support staff's efforts and thoroughness, but all I can say at this point is if you haven't installed High Sierra yet, don't. I certainly regret doing so.

Fair comment. So I need to move all files I may want to edit and change to my root (home) folder? Ok that's not making my life ****, granted, but it seems inconvenient and unnecessary. It was also something Apple support staff weren't aware of as I spent a fair chunk of time in a chat yesterday with them trying to resolve issue. They came up with reinstalling High Sierra, which took time and didn't help. Also, thank you for providing the solution.

Yes, that is how OS X has always worked. Personal files should always go in your home folder, or put them in /Users/Shared if you want to share them with other local users. The root level of the hard drive is an admin/system area; don't put user files there.

chew1000 wrote:

There are certain apps (Media Composer for me) that only work by putting files at the root of a drive. But this issue is easy to solve by disabling sip

Seriously? That's a huge problem. Software that unnecessarily insists on writing to a protected System area of the OS is a security risk, especially when it requires the disabling of System Integrity Protection to run. I would contact the developer and tell them to fix their broken software.

Writing to the root of a drive is actually part of an essential feature of how the software works in our office setting. It's pro level software that has been around for decades, not at all worried about it. You don't disable sip to run anything anyway, only to fix the permissions. Then sip goes back on once the changes are made. No security risk or problem at all.